


Control

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Corpses, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mild Gore, Rage, Yasha/Jester pre-slash if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 19:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: Yasha’s in control, in battle, no matter how deep into the cold, calculating depths of her anger she descends into during a fight. Her rage is a tool, a weapon for her to wield – nothing less, nothing more.  It coils cold and dead inside of her, a whiteness, a kind ofpeacethat steals over her in the heat of battle. It makes her fearless, calculating, unstoppable. It grounds her.She’s in control. Until she’s not.





	Control

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the tags: this fic involves someone repeatedly hitting/stabbing a corpse, described in some detail. If that's going to upset you, duck out now; otherwise, don't worry about the gore warning because that's all it's for.
> 
> Many thanks to @rhydalic/@rhydart (tumblr) for the original prompt ("Yasha thinking she's in control, until she realises she isn't"), and for tolerating the weirdness that resulted in good humour. Many thanks to @ladyofrosefire (AO3/tumblr), for the beta that helped this fic become the best version of itself.

Yasha’s in control, in battle, no matter how deep into the cold, calculating depths of her anger she descends. Her rage is a tool, a weapon for her to wield – nothing less, nothing more. It coils cold and dead inside of her, a whiteness, a kind of _peace_ that steals over her in the heat of battle. It makes her fearless, calculating, unstoppable. It_ grounds_ her.

She’s in control of it, though. She’s in control– until she’s not.

It’s something to do with his bone structure, she’ll think later. The heavy brow, square jaw and soft chin, the slightly upturned tip of his nose… the man has some Xorhassian blood in him, somewhere, most likely. He’s _not_ Xorhassian – just some run-of-the-mill bandit skulking around the road that leads from the Empire to Nicodranas – but he _looks_ like he is.

He looks like a man she once knew.

(He looks like the man who held the axe, and grinned as he brought it down–)

For now, though, she’s not thinking at all. Her mind is full of red fury, stained across the pale peace of her rage. It’s a blinding, frothing sort of emotion, bubbling up from a deep, ugly place inside of her she hadn’t known existed, swelling into a torrent in her chest. It demands action, demands violence, demands _revenge_– and who is she, she thinks, as she raises her sword high above her head, to deny herself that?

(“Fucking _hell_– Yasha!” yells Fjord, as he watches her cleave into the skull of an already-dead bandit, splitting it apart like an overripe pear beneath the weight of her greatsword. She doesn’t hear him over the violent, furious ringing in her ears. The blow does not satisfy, and she brings it down again, this time shattering the left side of the ribs into a pulpy, bloody mess. “Yasha! Stop! He’s _dead_!”)

The next blow strikes down through the centre of the half-crushed chest, cutting through the sternum like butter and sinking a half-inch into the loamy dirt below. She yanks it free with a snarl, panting. This haze is not like the others, the white distance tinged with a thrumming red. This rage pulses in her ears, in time to the beat of her heart, and it demands _blood_.

She brings the blade down again.

(“Is she okay?” asks Caduceus, mildly as ever, watching a snaking loop of intestine slip free from the corpse’s opened-up abdomen. “This seems a little– excessive.”

The blade comes down once more, tearing into the pelvis this time. The bone there is too dense and twisty to shatter easily, but the blade nicks it, partially bounces off it only to be brought down again.

(Beau flinches at the scrape of steel on bone, sharp and jagged in her ears. “Yeah, no _shit_, Deuces, she’s not– Can you like– do something? Is she _cursed_?”

“She’s lost her mind!” hisses Nott, grabbing at Caleb’s wrist and trying to tug him backwards, away from the barbarian currently methodically mutilating a cadaver in front of them. He shakes her off, gently, but he too is staring wary and wide-eyed. “She’s going to turn on us next, we should _run_–”)

The sword comes down, again, carving a flapped chunk of flesh off at the hip. Again, sinking deep into thigh and fracturing bone. _Again_, near-severing the arm at the shoulder, the tendons and ligaments and muscle parting like butter before heat, the thickness of the bone no match for her _rage_–

“_Enough_,” says Caduceus. The word is uncharacteristically sharp, a ringing sort of power to it that carries even over the rushing white noise of her rage. It gives Yasha split-second pause before she brings the sword down again – enough time for him to step forward and grab her arm. “That’s enough. You’ve had your time. Let the body rest, now.”

She could, if she wanted to, wrench out of his grip. Could bring the sword down again, again, _again_\- The red practically _howls_ for it, to continue the mutilation. He couldn’t stop her. She’s stronger, and he couldn’t stop her, weak and helpless and _pitiful_ as he is. And if he tried, she could turn the sword on _him_–

The blade hits the ground with a ringing sound, dropped from Yasha’s nerveless fingers in an almost reflex reaction of _revulsion_. The red still screams, but it’s muted, pressed behind an abrupt wall of _shame_.

She wouldn’t hurt Caduceus. She _wouldn’t_. She wouldn’t hurt _any _of her friends.

(But she _wanted_ to.)

“…Thank you.” Caduceus pats her shoulder, bends to pick up the sword – hands it back to her blade-first, with a smile, still gently clueless for all his insight. “Why don’t you go ask Jester to check you over, hmm?” His voice is loud enough that Jester can no doubt hear, his tone a little pointed. The words feel more like an order than a suggestion, for all the softness of them. “You got a little banged up in that fight, I think. I’ll deal with this one here.”

Yasha takes the sword, feels the blade cut into her palm and fingers before he can shift to holding the hilt. “It’s… just bruises,” she murmurs, but steps back nonetheless. Away from the corpse, and towards her living friends watching in silence.

“What,” says Fjord, as she approaches, faintly pale-faced and determinedly not looking at the mushy pile of human remains behind her, “the _everloving fuck_ was that about, Yasha?”

Yasha’s not sure if she has a good enough answer for him. Not really.

“He looked–” she starts, a little helplessly. She’s suddenly aware of the blood spattered across her face, a fine mist that most definitely isn’t hers. It’s on her lips, too – she tastes it when her tongue darts out to wet them, and though blood has never bothered her before, the salt-iron tang of it now upsets her stomach. “He looked like one of the people who killed…” She’s not sure she can say it.

Nott is still alternating between trying to put herself between Yasha and Caleb, and trying to unsubtly tug Caleb a step or two backwards, with little success. Caleb, though – Caleb is watching her, something like recognition in his eyes. She thinks, abruptly, of his fits, the way he goes still and silent. She wonders whether he can see the mirror of it, in her, the explosion of senseless movement and violence.

(She wonders what ghosts he’s hiding, behind his ribs, that drive him to his quiet madness as hers drive her to fury.)

“Oh,” says Jester, softly, gently, and Yahsa’s chest constricts with the quiet _understanding_ in her usually strident voice. “Like the people who killed Zuala? Oh, _Yasha_.”

“Who’s–” starts Beau, cutting off with a grunt when Fjord elbows her in the ribs.

There’s a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s silence, hanging between the six of them like a spinning coin. Caduceus is busy with the corpse, scooping the soft, squirming parts back inside the abdominal cavity and closing what’s left of the eyes. He says prayer, makes a gesture; the body collapses into rot. Mushrooms sprout from pulped flesh, forcing their way up through the ribs and rooting in the bones, and moss steals over the extremities, anchoring it to the dirt. Inch by inch, it returns to the earth.

Yasha, though, has no eyes for that quiet miracle – has eyes only for the deep blue hair and delicately decorated horns, suddenly pressed right below her chin. One of the horns is digging into her clavicle, but she barely notices the pain. She’s busy being shocked silent by the _pressure_ of it all, the warmth, the faint smell of sugar and rosewater that suddenly fills her senses beneath the intimate smell of dirt and sweat and _Jester_.

It’s been too long since she was last hugged.

The last wisps of red recede from the edges of her vision, the white a second after, rolling away like fog in a sea storm. Her shoulders round, back bowing, and she leans into the embrace almost without thought. She wasn’t sure if she still knew how to do this, to accept affection like this, but… the body remembers, it seems, even when the mind forgets. There’s an ache still, sunk deep inside her ribs – but it’s muffled, now, by the press of arms around her.

“You should talk to us, you know,” says Jester, softly, for her ears only. The words are muffled against the fabric of her jerkin, but Yasha still feels them resonant within her chest. “Next time you feel all angry like that. Not just all, _ooo, woo, fighting, yay!_ angry, but… properly angry, you know? Sad angry.”

She squeezes Yasha a little tighter, nuzzles against her shoulder. The horn presses a red scrape across Yasha’s collar bone, and still Yasha does not feel it above the enormity of Jester’s embrace. “We’re your _friends_,” says Jester. “_Talk _to us.”

Yasha’s throat closes tight. This time, it’s not because of the blood she can taste on her lips. Rather, it’s the sweat-sweetness that fills her lungs, the wisps of stray hair that brush her mouth, that steals her breath away.

“I…” Hesitantly, she rests her chin on top of Jester’s head, lets it fill her vision with blue hair and her nose with pastry-sugar and flowers. “...Yeah. Okay, Jester. I’ll try.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me @ sparxwrites on tumblr for more.


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